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John Sloan
American, 1871-1951
Renganeschi's Saturday Night, 1912
Oil on canvas
66.7 x 81.3 cm (26 1/4 x 32 in.)
Signed: John Sloan 1912
Gift of Mary Otis Jenkins, 1926.1580
John Sloan often explored the leisure activities of working-class women and the changing social mores of the 20th century. Here he focused on three women who sit together at the central table of a popular Italian restaurant in New York City. By showing the women celebrating a night out on the town, the artist emphasized their newfound freedom to socialize in public spaces without the need for male escorts. Although he indicated their working-class status through their “unladylike” gestures—legs wrapped around their chairs and pinkies flared in the air—Sloan did not cast judgment on the women’s relaxed behavior. His informal style and loose brushwork enliven this scene of urban leisure with a sense of immediacy and action.
— Permanent collection label
Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories
Exhibition History
Indiana, South Bend Art Association, "American Painting in the Manner of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries," February 10-March 31, 1948.
Washington DC, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, "Metropolitan Lives: The Ashcan Artists and Their Lives, 1897-1917," November 17, 1995-March 17, 1996.
Art Institute of Chicago, "Art and Appetite: American Painting, Culture, and Cuisine," November 10, 2013-January 27, 2014; traveled to Fort Worth, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, February 22-May 18, 2014, cat. 63.
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young, Jewel City: Art from San Francisco's Panama-Pacific International Exposition, October 17, 2015-January 10, 2016, cat. 69.
Publication History
Judith A. Barter et al, American Arts at The Art Institute of Chicago: From Colonial Times to World War I (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1998), pp. 327-329, no. 173.
